Granada

(Sat. and Sun. Oct. 17-18th)

After half a day in Seville seeing the rest of the sites on foot Kat and I headed to the train station to make our way to Granada. She slept and I as usual did work (probably sorting/deleting pictures, which on this trip is like pushing a rock uphill). We schlepped ourselves to the hostel and met Jessica and her friend Kara there. Then it was time to go find dinner. They found a great place that had 8 euro couscous, a shisha bar (hookah- flavored tobacco like the catepillar smokes in Alice in Wonderland). So we sat on little cushions and had a big helping of couscous with vegetables on top, brought out for four people. Hmmmm no wonder it was so cheap (8 euro is cheap!). And then they brought another one. Perfect, we were satisfied, plenty of rice and vegetables for each of us. Aaaaaaaand then they brought two more. And we were STUFFED. And we had as much honey mint tea as we wanted! And I wanted a lot :) But then I had to skip out to get back to watch the last-second let-down USC game. Much more of a let down than seeing highlights of them losing to Oregon later in the season.

The next day we had plans for the Alhambra- a Muslim palace from however many centuries ago. It's up on the hill overlooking the city. Apparently it was sorta re-discovered by Washington Irving (author of Sleepy Hollow) who wrote about it and is credited with inspiring renewed interest and restoration. And thus his fake voice with British accent narrated the audio guide to us for hours.

First we went to get "full American breakfast" at some place Kara and Jessica had seen. I wouldn't quite call it full, nor quite American, but I guess it was breakfast. Europeans seem to be fond of super-ridiculous crusty toast and even like little rolls that are super crusty too. (Or else we just had lots of two day old bread products cause we stayed in lots of hostels and ate at lots of cheap restaurants for breakfast and lunch.) We had the tiniest table ever and it was packed with stuff. Also, Europeans love having coffee AND juice, so most meals come that way, rather than having coffee before or after your meal. You just get two drinks.

We walked the streets a bit first and there was a lot pedestrian shopping areas (of course) but there also many touristy Turkish kind of shops full of trinkets and clothing and leather goods.

We also checked out one of the churches in the city, not the cathedral cause it cost 7 euro to go in. I knew I was seeing enough sweet churches that I didn't need to pay that much in Granada for a church. No thanks.

The whole main street cutting through the city had these sculpture-esque light fixtures. Kinda contemporary kinda art deco kinda I dunno what, but I liked em and I liked the city for trying something distinct.

Once we got past all the tourist shops trying to detour everyone who's looking for the palace, we got to a big gate. Through the gate was...not the palace. It was the grounds of the palace, which amounted to acres and acres of forest and a long uphill road:

When we FINALLY got up to the gate, it was time to check it- we had pre-purchased tickets to ensure it didn't sell out (as it had LAST time Jessica was in Granada, ONLY to see this palace!) We found out when we got our tickets that the time we scheduled our "entry" for was not at the entrance, but at the entrance to the actual palace, which was apparently a 20 minute walk away, and it was 10 minutes until our "entry time" and they said if we didn't get to the palace by that time we couldn't go in- occupancy limits and such things.

So we ran across the entire complex. Through gardens, past other huge buildings, ridiculous stuff. Kat fell on a set of stairs that we didn't even need to climb cause it was the wrong building. The place was huge, surrounded with walls within walls, mutliple palaces up there, including huge gardens, with fountains all over the place. Apparently the only place in the city not subject to the drought.

We made it! And it was crazy. SO ornate. Water fountains everywhere. Huge and sprawling. Great views of the city and the mountains, cause it was up on the hill next to the city. Here's an example of what basically all the rooms looked like. Super decorated ceilings, columns, walls, all carved, all clearly by hand. Ridiculous.

An entire carved wall with really cool windows. Muslim architecture has much more ornate abstract decoration partly because they don't believe in depicting God or in having images because its idol worship.

They even use their language as decoration, around the doors...

This was the vaulted ceiling of one of the rooms. Hundreds of little hand-carved stalactite type things. Wow.

The main courtyard with reflecting pool. Doesn't look good for a swim though.

Another ornate wall with windows, close up...

and far away.

Even more close up now at the decoration...

MORE close up :)

Another amazing outdoor space still withIN the palace...

Here is looking up at one of the ridiculously ornate dome interiors. Like a cave!

Another courtyard. Great sound of running water coming into the palace from all the windows. Here were a lot of nice trees and such.

Here's mister Washington Irving's plaque. Says he wrote in these buildings about La Alhambra in 1829.

This is actually a picture of some other faroff thing in the hills.

Reflecting pool.

I LOVE how the water flows down the channel in the steps. Awesome.

Here's where it trickles out into the pond.

Other buildings of the palace complex, taken from inside the palace itself. Its like a city.

The real city, down below.

Yeah! I saw lots of big twisty vines in many cities. They look cool.

Giant sculpted square bushes also look cool, and we also saw those in many cities. This was part of the gardens, which were a whole separate complex up above the palace...

Arches cut into bushes, or grown that way. (Cool)

Roses.

This is a great photo. These stones are worn flat and polished from years of use. They looked and felt so cool! I love seeing the effect of repetition like that, because its amazing how many people would have had to walk across a stone to wear it flat. A stone!! Its like its bearing the memory of all the people who walked there before me.

More water fountains. Like they were jumping.

More fountains, of course.

That night we did as they do in Granada- the pub crawl, Granada style- free tapa with a beverage. So we went to four little bars and ordered wine or beer at each and got little sandwiches and things each time. The last place we got pitchers of sangria and huge sampler plates. They even have maps they hand out for free, with all the bars that take part in this.

Here was the first bar we went to, I think they were just ham and cheese or something, with fries. But free with a beer!

Kara probably wouldn't like this picture. But it shows our next plate of food in the foreground :)

This tray we got two of, with our pictures of Sangria which were also quite cheap. And I got most of the food when all three girls realized there was tuna in everything and didn't wanna eat it :)

After that we had to make our way to our appointments at the Turkish Baths :). We soaked in the different temperature pools, had a massage (I almost fell asleep) and drank more mint honey tea. Man it was great. Then we walked back through the cool night air home and went straight to bed cause we were pretty relaxed at that point :) It was fanTAStic and pretty cheap.

The next morning Kara had to leave early and then Jessica Kat and I did some shopping and walking around streets after we got free the-smallest-crepe-ever with blended breakfast juice at another little Turkish hookah bar, until Jessica had to leave- she had an earlier flight cause she wanted to get back and do some school work. I always figured I wanted the maximum possible time in whatever place I was visiting :) School? Bah.

Here's the sidewalk, curb, and street- I love how they made the sidewalk angle up to make a planter box and then back down for the curb, and then just cut into it where the crosswalk is. First truly unique curb condition I've seen in a long time.

This was The White Store (cept in Spanish- La Tienda Blanca, or something like that). They sold all natural Egyptian cotton stuff that was crazy expensive for being plain white cotton.

This building is very plant-y. Pretty amazing.

We also did something I always do in cities, is gravitate towards the body of water. Looked like it'd be a nice river...uhhhhhhh WHAT?? Okay so upstream it was nice and flowing, but downstream, it was dammed off and trickling through and basically a dry ravine. Gross.

We crossed the LOVELY river and up some stairs to a government building of some sort, but this pictures was better than the building.

Back towards our hostel, the Cathedral that we didn't go see :)

Kat and I walked uphill up streets into little neighborhoods in the foothills, across from the Alhambra. Good pictures. From there we wandered through little tiny steet stoney streets past little houses and then down into the town again and got ourselves back to the airport on our flight that got in pretty late to Barcelona. Because we ran out of things to do and thought we should do schoolwork we spent a couple hours at the airport before we left :) cause we got on an earlier shuttle to the airport. Maybe Jessica was right. This once :)

Here's the Alhambra across the way...

Here's the pedestrian boulevard down the middle of the street, with more cool angular curb cuts that almost make walls on each side. Love it.

These were roasted nuts for 1 euro, and reminded me of some roasted nuts that Tiffany and I hoarded from my cousin's wedding last summer, so I took a picture and sent it to her. I HAD to get some :)

Lastly, our room (my bed on the left) with giant French doors that let out onto the tiniest balcony ever...that had BARS over it. Couldn't even look down the street!

The hallway, notably the chairs where I and my laptop watched the ND game in the dark at 11pm the night before.

Just like that we were back on another plane. So many airports in Europe (especially because we were flying budget airlines) had us just walking out to and from the plane. That doesn't really happen in the US anymore...does it?